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Clinton to win: expert with 'crystal ball'

A researcher who accurately predicted the outcomes of the 2015 Queensland election and this year's federal poll says Hillary Clinton will win next week.

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Source: AAP


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The world can relax: Hillary's got the US election in the bag according to a Queensland researcher who has a kind of crystal ball.

University of Queensland computer scientist Xue Li says that barring any last minute scandals, Hillary Clinton will become the 45th president of the United States next week.

Professor Li says Australians can have faith in his forecast, given he successfully predicted the outcomes of the last two federal polls in Australia, and the last two contests in Queensland and NSW.

The fact he got last year's Queensland result right really says something: Annastacia Palaszczuk was dubbed the accidental premier when she led Labor to a stunning victory that no-one else saw coming.

Prof Li's crystal ball is a UQ-developed algorithm which harvests online posts - primarily on Twitter - in real time and then analyses them to form conclusions about how people will vote.

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He says the US presidential race has become much tighter in the past few days, but he's convinced Democrat Clinton will come out on top.

"Unless there is some big negative news about Hillary over the weekend, or a dramatic change in the Trump campaign, our prediction for a Hillary win will hold," he said on Friday.

The latest two opinion polls out of the US suggest he's right.

Both have Clinton holding onto her narrow lead over her Republican rival just days out from the November 8 election.

But Prof Li admits it ain't over 'til it's over and given the number of scandals that have peppered the campaign, no-one can guarantee there won't be another.


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